Apparently, not much.

The pressing issues of the day according to NBC: Terri Schiavo, sugar subsidies, the Everglades Project, the over-asked “Will you run as a 3rd party candidate?” question, English as the official language, and the very pressing issue of deciding what to do when Fidel Castro dies. There were a few moments that allowed for internal bickering and foreign policy. Most of the time, the candidates were fighting the moderators to get in policy talking points so that the American people might be slightly more informed of what the candidates actually plan to do should they be elected President. (more…)

Stoking the Fire: Despite the fact that the comment was taken out of context, opportunities still abound to seize on Romney’s ‘I like to fire people’ gaffe.

• Cue Vice President Biden and DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
• Out in far left field, Huffington Post reports that Romney Likes ‘Being Able to Fire People’ for Being Gay.
• Meanwhile, GOP candidates Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich speak out in defense of Romney’s comment.

MTV Pretends Poetry Night Was Ron Paul Event: MTV’s website gushes, Ron Paul Inspires Poetry In New Hampshire.  But not so fast, says Newser, which reports that the event’s organizers say it wasn’t a Paul rally at all.  Newser reports: “organizers tell the Worcester Telegram & Gazette that it wasn’t a Paul rally, and estimate that in a crowd of 50-70 people, only four or five were Paul supporters. They say MTV even took lines from poems out of context to make them appear pro-Paul.”

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This was the most social issues-heavy debate of them all. In New Hampshire. It was no coincidence.

In an election cycle where the economy is more important to voters than it’s ever been, focusing on social issues not only lets Obama off the hook, but also paints Republican candidates as “extreme” due to the GOP’s backwards inability to effectively and attractively message values.

In one of the most bizarre debate moments of modern times, candidates were asked whether or not states should be allowed to ban contraceptives, based on the illogical presupposition of a Santorum stance, one which he was not given the courtesy of clarifying before moderators proceeded with their misdirected question. This discussion went on for nearly a half an hour.

Following this, the discussion of gay marriage, which both Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry effectively shut down (and the moderators quickly changed subjects) when they pointed out the severe hypocrisy of talking equality in a country that discriminates against Christians, with the example of adoption and the Catholic Charities.

It took 3/4 of the way into the debate before candidates were asked about the economy. During a time when unemployment is, cosmetically, at plus-8% with hundreds of thousands giving up on the workforce entirely (before you celebrate the barely visible dip in the unemployment numbers by way of a shrunken workforce), quite frankly, no one gives a damn about gay marriage. People care even less about contraceptives, which no one believes states should or will ban.

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Tuesday wasn’t a great night for accuracy at the (openly) liberal network, as Charlie Spiering of the Washington Examiner points out:

In an op-ed in today’s Los Angeles Times, Aaron David Miller admits the obvious: “Unlike his two predecessors, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Obama isn’t in love with the idea of Israel.”

But Miller doesn’t address Barack Obama’s immersion in the anti-Israel, antisemitic views of his pastor and mentor, Jeremiah Wright, in whose Trinity United Church of Christ Obama worshipped for two decades.

Nor does Miller note Obama’s friendship with former Palestine Liberation Organization advisor Rashid Khalidi, whose anti-Israel views are a matter of public record, or Obama’s eager association with Arab causes early in his political career.

The Obamas with Palestinian intellectual Edward Said, 1998 (Source: Electronic Intifada)

Instead, Miller cites Obama’s “logical,” “intellectual” and “moral” approach to Israel–as opposed to the “emotional” approach of previous occupants of the White House, whose views were allegedly informed by simplistic faith and fables:

Obama’s views came from another place: his own logic, the university environment in which he developed intellectually and his own moral sensibilities. And according to this view, the Arab-Israeli dispute isn’t some kind of morality play that pits the forces of good against the forces of darkness. Instead, it’s a more complex tale, not of heroes and villains but of a conflict between two rights and two just causes. It’s also a conflict that is vital to American interests. And those interests are being threatened by the divide between those who want a solution and are serious about moving toward one, and those who aren’t serious about finding a solution and throw up obstacles. After three years, the president has clearly placed the Israelis in the latter category and the Palestinians in the former.

Miller adds that the sour relationship between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a result of Obama’s allegedly “intellectual” approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He seems to forget that it was Netanyahu who famously gave Obama an “intellectual” lesson in the history of the conflict and Israel’s borders in May 2011:

The truth is that Obama’s antipathy towards Israel is rooted in a passionate, radical left-wing ideology that thrives in both the academic cloisters and the radical pulpits that gave Obama his political inspiration and foundation. And the Los Angeles Times knows it, for it is in possession of a key piece of historical evidence: the “Rashid Khalidi tape.” (more…)

Can a Christian be a libertarian? A column with some questionable logic that prevents the piece from being truly thought-provoking. A few things:

Libertarians talk a lot about economics, and rightfully so. Money is central to a healthy economy. Christians are also concerned about money; in fact God talks frequently about money in the Bible.

Actually, money is mentioned more in the Bible than anything else. I’ve written previously of this here. Scriptures tell us that money is a tool with which evil can control man. The Bible obviously doesn’t give political doctrine specific to the Fed, but rather as Christians we are taught to use our access to money as a way of evangelism through deed. This is something libertarianism leaves out, the God part. Are libertarians conservatives without God? That’s a question friends and I have discussed.

It is truly unfortunate that modern American churches seem to think the state’s means of “spreading democracy” through aggressive war is more important than spreading the peaceful message of the Gospel of Christ. Jesus came to bring “peace on earth, good will to men,” and by extension the Christian’s goal ought to be the same.

This passage presupposes that every conflict in which the United States has ever engaged is due to the United States’s frat boy aggression and need to sow its seed of democracy by force. Furthermore, it’s odd to me that a follower of limited government would advocate for a state-endorsed religion as a way of nation building, supplanting the previous logical fallacy. This author quotes Paul more than the Bible, which tells me everything I need to know about this piece. Ron Paul is not God. What is truly unfortunate is that by making the universal straw man that “modern American churches seem to think,” i.e. all churches, the author betrays a (conscious or subconscious) prejudice against churches based on his own presupposition.

Horn misses a huge part of Christ’s work, exemplified in Matthew 10:34:

Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.

I get that Horn wants to promote his stylized version of Biblical interpretation, but he should realize that Ron Paul’s words carry no weight compared to Christ’s, and he perhaps should study the Word of God more than Paul’s words, especially those newsletters.

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- The Denver Post fabricates gun statistics, is called out, and corrects:

Editor’s note: This story was corrected. Because of a reporting error, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics on fatal shooting accidents involving children in 2007 were overstated. The number of children under 18 was 112. Also, the story misstated the number of children believed to be living in homes with guns. A survey published in Pediatrics magazine indicated, with a 95 percent confidence level, that between 1.57-1.82 million children live in a home with loaded and unlocked guns.

Kudos to Free Colorado for the sharp eye and the Denver Post for printing a correction in bold.

- Big Journalism’s Dana Loesch will provide analysis throughout the Iowa caucus:

On the night of the caucus, CNN will utilize its anchors, including Blitzer, Crowley, John King, Anderson Cooper and Erin Burnett, from 7 p.m.-midnight from the Election Center and in Iowa. Political analyst Gloria Borger, senior political analyst David Gergen, poltiical contributors James Carville, Ari Fleishcer, Dana Loesch and Roland Martin will also participate.

- Reddit targets Paul Ryan.

- Michelle Obama wears two-thousand dollar sundresses on her taxpayer-supported Hawaiian vacation. Do you think the media will report this the same way they reported Gingrich’s Tiffany credit line or Romney’s bet?

- What? The beyond-Communist North Korean media/government Photoshopped photos of Kim Jong Il’s funeral to make it appear as though every single soul in the country was sobbing and giving their undivided attention to the procession?

- The 2011 cable network ranker.

- Bill Maher’s Tebow Tweet sparks calls for HBO protest:

Bill Maher has run afoul of religious conservatives yet again, after a Christmas Eve tweet the comedian sent about overtly religious Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow. Following a 40-14 Broncos’ loss to the Buffalo Bills on Saturday, Maher tweeted, “Wow, Jesus just… #TimTebow  bad! And on Xmas Eve! Somewhere in hell Satan is tebowing, saying to Hitler ‘Hey, Buffalo’s killing them’. (Adult language has been removed from the Tweet.)

Predictably, the dig from the atheist comedian didn’t go over well with Christians. Fox Business’ “Follow the Money” host Eric Bolling got things rolling with his Twitter response: “Bill Maher is disgusting vile trash. I can’t even repeat what he just tweeted about Tebow..on Christmas Eve. #straighttohellBill.”

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The sudden obsession with Ron Paul’s alleged racism is a classic mainstream media bait-and-switch, and conservatives seem to be falling for it.

Anyone who has followed Ron Paul for the past few years ought to be familiar with the story of his controversial newsletters, broken in January 2008 at The New Republic by my friend James Kirchick.

It’s old news. That’s not to say Paul’s defenses are adequate. But it’s old news anyway.

The real question is why the issue has resurfaced now, in late December, after months of campaigning and debate. And the answer is obvious: because Paul is a threat to win the Iowa caucuses. Rival campaigns have a motive to leak opposition research on Paul.  A frightened Republican establishment is eager to see him disappear from contention. His views–actual or alleged–damage the Republican brand and message as a whole.

I’m no Ron Paul supporter. While I agree with Paul’s ideals of limited government, I disagree with his views on the Federal Reserve, and I disagree vehemently with his opinions on foreign policy, which I regard as not only misguided, but dangerous. I believe that questions about his true motivations–especially with regard to his views on Israel–are legitimate. And yet I also believe he’s been getting a raw deal lately.

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- Janet Robinson, Chief Executive of the NYT, steps down with a hefty $15m exit package:

A Times Co representative declined to give any more details on Robinson’s departure beyond the statement issued last Thursday, and did not make her available for comment …

… News of Robinson’s severance agreement comes during the same week that a wave of buyouts hit the newsroom of the flagship New York Times and the company disclosed that it was in talks to sell 16 regional newspapers to Halifax Media Holdings. More than a dozen newsroom staffers reportedly took buyouts, among them well-known bylines including sports writer George Vecsey, metro columnist Clyde Haberman, and business reporter Diana Henriques.

Against the backdrop of an 80 percent decline in the Times Co’s stock over her seven-year tenure as CEO, the size of Robinson’s exit package prompted some criticism in the newsroom. Times Co shares are down 25 percent this year alone.

- Ron Paul bolts from CNN interview upon being asked about those newsletters:

Sure, Paul still has a number of questions to answer about these and the passage of time doesn’t diminish the offensiveness of newsletters filled with this stuff using his name to make him profits, but don’t you wish the media would have asked this of Obama about Jeremiah Wright?

Speaking of those newsletters:

Transcript, starting around 1:45

I also put out a political type of business investment newsletter that sort of covered all these areas.  And it covered a lot about what was going on in Washington, and financial events, and especially some of the monetary events.  Since I had been especially interested in monetary policy, had been on the banking committee, and still very interested in, in that subject, that this newsletter dealt with it.  This had to do with the value of the dollar, the pros and cons of the gold standard, and of course the disadvantages of all the high taxes and spending that our government seems to continue to do.

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- Via NewsBusters, it’s come to this: Ed Schultz says he will be “cheer-leading” for the Occupy  Wall Street movement every night on the air. I’m  not sure even  the Left can handle Ed  Schultz in a cheer-leading uniform every night. Come on, Ed, we could understand every once in a while on a weekend, maybe, especially if you’ve had a few too many, but every night?

Uh, is this intended to help or hurt?

- Washington Times:

- The Media Primary: How news and blogs view the GOP primary candidates. Ron Paul, does in fact, get the short end of the coverage stick. Mitt Romney’s negatives trump all.

- CNN uses PolitiFact to hit GOP candidates. But who hits PolitiFact? We do, that’s who!

What good is a self-appointed truth squad that appears in a national news segment like this merely to call the top-three GOP candidates “mostly” liars? Oh, and what about one that doesn’t bother to fact-check even a single Democrat?

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In complicated times, when even the grown ups can’t get it right, Gen Y TV sat down with new media publisher and New York Times Bestselling author, Andrew Breitbart (Righteous Indignation: Excuse me while I save the world!) to gain insight into the man behind BigGovernment.com, the Internet media outlet best known for breaking the ACORN and Anthony Weiner sexting scandals.  Addressing topics from new media opportunities to the current political landscape, Breitbart discussed each topic with a heavy dose of reality as it applies to Gen-Y, specifically young adults 18-35.

“Gen Y is very much SCREWED!” Breitbart said with conviction, “when it comes to the raw economics of what my generation and the baby boomers have handed to you.” Regarding the future of Generation Y in new media, he took a more positive, yet cautious position, “There are so many opportunities out there if media continues to be free, and if the government doesn’t try to impede and say we’re going to put limitations on you.” Breitbart stressed the innate compatibilities between young adults and new media, and encouraged anyone with a digital camera to report stories from their community that the mainstream media isn’t covering.

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He has written about having sex with an underage girl, and claims he once threatened to kill a pregnant girlfriend unless she had an abortion. He claims to hate marijuana, but recommends heroin as the cure for suburban boredom. He mocks “Tea Baggers” and scorns “hippies.” His Russian newspaper was shuttered after a government crackdown, and he’s a regular on The Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC.

Meet Mark Ames, the provocateur who created the Koch brothers conspiracy theory.

Long before John Podesta’s Center for American Progress began targeting the Koch brothers for their supposed role in the Tea Party, and two years before the Kochs were cast as the villains of public sector union protests in Wisconsin, Ames had already shaped the Koch brothers meme.

Ames and co-author Yasha Levine launched the conspiracy theory–and its twin themes of drug abuse and gay sex–with a blog post (now removed) at Playboy.com in February 2009, entitled: “Backstabber: Is Rick Santelli High on Koch?” They published almost exactly the same article at their own site, exiledonline.com, as “Exposing the Rightwing PR Machine: Is CNBC’s Rick Santelli Sucking Koch?”

Ames and Levine alleged that Santelli’s famous “rant heard around the world” that inspired the Tea Party movement “was not at all spontaneous as his alleged fans claim, but rather it was a carefully-planned trigger” for an “anti-Obama campaign.” That campaign, they claimed, had been planned for months before the 2008 election, and funded by “the Koch family, the multibilllionaire owners of the largest private corporation in America, and funders of scores of rightwing thinktanks and advocacy groups.”

Ames would later explain that he had been inspired to write about the Kochs by his experiences in post-Soviet Moscow, when he edited a sensational newspaper, the eXile–described last year by Vanity Fair as “arguably the most abusive, defamatory, un-evenhanded, and crassest publication in Russia” before it closed in 2008. (more…)

-Score one for the Paulers! If Paul’s comments on a nuclear Iran didn’t earn enough headlines, criticizing his amount of media coverage for an extended period of time definitely will. That being said, I continue to see Paul mentioned all over the news, but was/is it just not the right sort of coverage for his fans?

- Cheney comes out with a book just in time for Democrats to retire their “Weekend at Bush’s” doll and point fingers at a new bogeyman. Cheney is booked for an appearance on “The View.” Imagine Mr. Burns sitting amongst a throng of angry hens and you won’t even have to set your DVR.

- The Twitter Effect: We’re all members of the media now.

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I’m waiting to see this headling so far from all of the media outlets who breathlessly reported how those of the tea party persuasion were “taking hostages,” “suicide bombers,” or “terrorists.” So far, I haven’t seen it which means either the MSM gave up on a losing narrative or are shamefully facing the fact that a bunch of other people in Iowa must be conservative “terrorists,” too.

From Big Journalism contributor Rusty Weiss earlier this month:

This past Friday Politico ran an op-ed titled, “The Tea Party’s Terrorist Tactics,” which featured an illustration of an individual with a dollar sign-shaped bomb strapped to their chest, and argued that the party had progressed from hostage-taking to “the intentional infliction of harm on innocent Americans to achieve a political objective – terrorism.”

Joe Klein penned a piece for Time in which he accused Republicans of being beholden to ‘tea party robots,’ and worse, that their perceived unwillingness to compromise is something that would have made Osama bin Laden proud. The exact quote being that were he alive, bin Laden “could not have come up with a more clever strategy for strangling our nation.”

The results:

Bachmann received 28 percent of the nearly 17,000 votes cast. Texas Rep. Ron Paul was close behind her with 27 percent. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty came in a distant third with 13 percent of the vote, followed by former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum with 9 percent and businessman Herman Cain with 8 percent.

Does this mean that everyone who voted for them are “terrorists?”

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